Trophy Strips

[Falvaire]

Hello,

 

Just curious if there's been any thoughts about making a thinner rectangular trophy card for users to generate, in addition to the style currently available.  Instead of another 'card', they could be 'strips' of the players information, similar to the banners already available at the top of people's profiles, yet in an image form for people to take elsewhere.

 

I've personally never liked the size of trophy cards, as most people put them in their forum signature, and they often make the person's signature take up more space than the actual message in their posts, and it just seems cluttered and doesn't fit well with the style/shape of most forum layouts.  That's why I don't use trophy cards, yet I would like to if there was a thin one to use to share my details without being as intrusive as the current shape/sizes most trophy/achievement sites opt for.

 

I'd like to see an option to generate a subtle thin trophy card, that still can show off people's accomplishments, yet doesn't have the height of the current cards, so it can fit snugly in a signature.  As I mentioned before, the current banner at the top of someone's public profile on this site is a good example of the shape and the type of statistics to highlight, yet something smaller and less wide would be excellent, maybe something 500 pixels wide, 30-45 pixels high?  I'd do a mock up, yet if I was that skilled with imagery, I wouldn't be suggesting this, and would be offering to assist instead .  

 

Anyone else have any similar/differing ideas on this?  Any of the site management have any thoughts on this?  Or is it possible that I'm just completely blind, and this is already available (I am pretty stupid sometimes haha)?

 

Thanks for listening, and thanks to the dev team for all the work they already do on the site .

Edited March 20, 2016 by Shuklar

[Satoshi Ookami]

Strips, huh... gotta wonder if this actually breaks rule #9?

 

Anyway... would you mind linking to visible example? I don't think we need another thing like Trophy Cards albeit smaller.

That would be pretty redundant imo. But maybe I just don't see how exactly you mean the shrink Trophy Cards =D

[crimsonidol38]

Anyone else have any similar/differing ideas on this?  Any of the site management have any thoughts on this?  Or is it possible that I'm just completely blind, and this is already available (I am pretty stupid sometimes haha)?

 

As I understand you want to have a slim trophy card that only shows the information that are visible on the top of each user's profile:

 

I could imagine that it could be just the information listed at the top of the "new" trophy card combined together. That would be roughly 550 pixels wide and ~35 pixels high:

 

Is that what you imagine or there other information you want to see? Maybe have an animation like the new trophy card.

 

 

BTW: I would also prefer a smaller trophy card.

Edited March 20, 2016 by crimsonidol-de

[Falvaire]

I could imagine that it could be just the information listed at the top of the "new" trophy card combined together. That would be roughly 550 pixels wide and ~35 pixels high:

 

Is that what you imagine or there other information you want to see? Maybe have an animation like the new trophy card.

 

 BTW: I would also prefer a smaller trophy card.

 

That's precisely in the realm of what I was thinking .  Thank you!  An animated one in that size would be amazing, cycling through the different types of statistics, maybe even recently played game icons too.

 

 

 

I don't think we need another thing like Trophy Cards albeit smaller.

That would be pretty redundant imo.

 

 

Hmmm, I'd only see it as redundant if someone put both the card and the strip in their signature together, otherwise it's the same feature in a more compact, less intrusive form.  The strip would be a replacement for the card, for those that would like something smaller.  Just giving people different options to suit their sensibilities/tastes would be a nice way to draw more users to the site, and heck, if they put it behind the premium subscription, I'd even pay for it.

Edited March 20, 2016 by Shuklar

[MMDE]

I used to make my own. I'm pretty sure I could still do that if I really wanted to. Even wrote my own little font for it. o.O

 

I had one of mine look like this:

The background color doesn't fit well on this site... but that could be changed. I used to have it black and white.

 

These were auto generated! ^^

Edited March 20, 2016 by MMDE

[Satoshi Ookami]

Hmmm, I'd only see it as redundant if someone put both the card and the strip in their signature together, otherwise it's the same feature in a more compact, less intrusive form.  The strip would be a replacement for the card, for those that would like something smaller.  Just giving people different options to suit their sensibilities/tastes would be a nice way to draw more users to the site, and heck, if they put it behind the premium subscription, I'd even pay for it.

Okay, now I see what you mean.

This is definitely elegant but... what about people that actually like game images? (Me included)

BlindMango is working hard to give all games the best images he can and if you reduced trophy cards to only a line image, the game images would not be visible =D

[Beyondthegrave07]

You could easily create this yourself with a simple screenshot tool. Though I understand the changing background stuff (Always thought they were awesome). Still hoping those trophy cards come to nonpremium members someday

[Falvaire]

 

 

I used to make my own. I'm pretty sure I could still do that if I really wanted to. Even wrote my own little font for it. o.O

 

I had one of mine look like this:

The background color doesn't fit well on this site... but that could be changed. I used to have it black and white.

 

These were auto generated! ^^

 

 

That is very cool, !  I wish I had the skills to automate something like that.  I would opt for something slightly larger personally, yet I like the pixel text

 

 

This is definitely elegant but... what about people that actually like game images? (Me included)

 

You mean the background image?  They could still be used in strips, albeit in a reduced fashion.

 

If they truly wanted to go all out, a web editor of sorts that allowed people to drag the strip over the desired area of the background to be cropped into their strip could be used.  Yes, that's obviously going overboard for a trophy card service, yet at this point I'm just theory-crafting and offering potential ideas.

 

And if the larger background image was an important part for people, they could just stick to using the trophy card stylings already available.

 

You could easily create this yourself with a simple screenshot tool. Though I understand the changing background stuff (Always thought they were awesome). Still hoping those trophy cards come to nonpremium members someday

 

People have always had the option of generating their own cards if they have the skill, interest, and time, yet the ease-of-use an automated generator provides is why thousands of people even use trophy cards to begin with.  I'd simply like to see more sizes available in that widely used (and greatly appreciated ) feature.

Edited March 21, 2016 by Shuklar

[crimsonidol38]

 

BlindMango is working hard to give all games the best images he can and if you reduced trophy cards to only a line image, the game images would not be visible =D

 

Using that logic it would also be disrespectful to his work when people choose their own image instead of using one of the default images for their trophy card and still there's the option to use a different image. 

 

This is definitely elegant but... what about people that actually like game images? (Me included)

 

Those can stick to it. It's just an option people would be able to choose:

 

Just giving people different options to suit their sensibilities/tastes would be a nice way to draw more users to the site, and heck, if they put it behind the premium subscription, I'd even pay for it.

Important part marked. Option != Enforced.

[BlindMango]

Hmm, you're recommending something in a format like the TrueTrophies strip cards? (They have even smaller ones that look like this too)


 
Images are possible, but would be tougher to put in a format like this - a fade effect or something could also be used on all of them to keep the images on one side and not have to worry about finding something super wide with content on the left or right, etc... In the end, if images couldn't end up being used, I wouldn't be offended or anything, lol 
 
Either way, it's Sly's decision if he wanted to add strip cards, but he's a bit busy with the site update and the current new cards right now so I'd wager something like this wouldn't be on top of the list  I like the idea though, hope he plays around with the idea in the future!

[Falvaire]

Yes, something between the sizes of TrueTrophies bar and strip options would be fine, yet to be honest, I think this site's presentation quality is much better, and also I think this site already has most of what it I was looking for in terms of design.

 

I just cropped your signature in MSPaint (attached), and that's basically the design & dimensions (500x45) I'd be looking for, yet with an animation cycling between all the common statistics - basically the example crimsonidol-de gave above.  Custom or adjustable backgrounds would be a nice touch, yet limited choices would work as well.

 

And, yeah I totally understand the priorities, just thanks for the timely response .  Just wanted to throw the idea out there so it could at least be pondered upon in the meantime.  I may even consider just buying premium and cropping the top of the premium signature for now, yet that'd be a lot of work with the rate I'm plowing through games lately hehe.

 

I know I'm suggesting a lot of what I think would look good, yet I'd like others to suggest what they'd think would work as well.  Thanks for everyone's ideas and feedback

Edited March 21, 2016 by Shuklar

[MMDE]

That is very cool, !  I wish I had the skills to automate something like that.  I would opt for something slightly larger personally, yet I like the pixel text

 

First you need a way to access the data, either it be directly from Sony or it be from somewhere that can access it from Sony. There are ways, not too hard, to get it from Sony. It used to be easier. Your script needs to be able to fetch this data.

 

Next, you want to write a script that generates the image you want with the data you fetch. I used to do this in PHP and the library GD which is rather easy and standard stuff. Most PHP builds/installs whatnot comes with the GD library, most doesn't have it enabled, but it's just to edit the .ini file, usually just uncomment a single line (remove the ";" in front). You want it to save the image to disk and not output to screen, and that to a given path and file name etc.

 

Then you need somewhere to host the image, needs to be the same url each time, else you gotta change the url in your signature every time. This can be solved with a free web host, there are several that support PHP and GD library.

 

Now you can just run the script (or load the page in the case of php script on a free server), and you will generate the image. For automatic update every x hour, you want to have on your PC or something a script that runs that script every x hour or something.

 

You don't need to install apache server and whatnot to use PHP, it can be used command line too. For example on Windows, just download PHP, extract it to wherever you want, then run the php.exe file in the bin directory in the command windom followed with the parameter that is the name of the script you want to run. It will output the output to command line (stdout).

 

This may sound very complicated and hard to do, but it really isn't.

 

As for the pixel font, I wrote it as a boolean array. Basically each letter had a table with true and false, deciding if a pixel should be colored or not. I thought this was a nice way to write a very tiny font. Most fonts look absolutely terrible when that small. But you can use normal fonts...

Edited March 20, 2016 by MMDE

[Falvaire]

O.O

 

*head explodes*

 

Thanks for that quick walkthrough hehe.  I had a general idea of how to go about it, as I use to do basic webdesign over 13 years ago (HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, MySQL), yet I never did get the hang of the image manipulation aspect of it (graphics and design were always the hard part of webdesign for me).  Yet 13+ years is a long time, and my brain is definitely rotting as most of that seems way over my head now.  I'm getting way too old...I think I need a nap...I wish I was joking haha.

Edited March 21, 2016 by Shuklar

[MMDE]

O.O

 

*head explodes*

 

Thanks for that quick walkthrough hehe.  I had a general idea of how to go about it, as I use to do basic webdesign over 13 years ago (HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, MySQL), yet I never did get the hang of the image manipulation aspect of it (graphics and design were always the hard part of webdesign for me).  Yet 13+ years is a long time, and my brain is definitely rotting as most of that seems way over my head now.  I getting way too old...I think I need a nap...I wish I was joking haha.

 

To access the data on different sites etc, there's cURL and to process HTML or XML whatever documents, you got DOMDocument. If you know your JavaScript, then DOMDocument is pretty useful!  You also got regex for matching and extracting data.

 

It may sound difficult, but if you know some basic PHP, it should be pretty easy to play around with and see if to works. May want to google for some examples to play around with and understand how it works.

 

EDIT: and the refresh every x time can be done with sleep , but you may want to check that it has actually slept for x time and not less, because it may wake up earlier!

Edited March 21, 2016 by MMDE